The Face of Rosenfeld — page 183: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

16 THE FACE OF ROSENFEL. the tide ran back up the stream, to crowd the narrow space between the banks above the sweeping curve, or down beneath the bridges and between the hulls of in- numerable vessels out to sea. Only in the space contig- uous to the house in Ballavoine Place they remained stationary. For just here, a configuration in the wall gave a whirling motion to the water. ‘The floating block that drifted too near this spot was inevitably drawn in, and once in there it stayed, pounded up and down, up and down against the masonry and the decay- ing piles, till it was melted quite away. It was a dark and mysterious recess, this little section of the river beneath the artist’s windows. Somehow the building stood about it in such a way as to cut off the sunlight, except, perchance, at high-noon. It was al- ways gloomy close to the wall. ven when the river sparkled brightest in the smiling summer days, just in here there was a dreary spot. Here the water swirled and did not dance in little waves. Here, too, had once been the end of a wharf, or wooden structure of some kind. A few of the venerable timbers yet remained embedded firmly in the river’s bottom. The blackened ends, projecting above the surface deepened the somber and forlorn effect. The house in which Maxey lived did not rise directly from the river wall. It stood back and left a little space—a mean and parsimonious space—utilized only by housewives for the hanging out of clothes. A high picketed fence prevented the contiguity of the river from being dangerous. Occasionally the janitor of the building, who was sup- posed to have a protecting eye for all that appertained to it, emerged from the basement where he lived into the